Perhaps the single biggest threat to your privacy online is the indiscriminate sharing of your IP address as you surf the web, a transaction which is invisible to the average user. A new Firefox browser, modified by veteran hackers, claims to solve that issue. However, you may experience slower performance.

The technology may also make it impossible for website owners like Ace to ban trolls. Currently this is done with software that blocks an IP address.

Does this mean the venerable Banned by Bill Association™ is obsolete?

Jeremy Kirk, IDG News Service

Wed Sep 20, 3:00 PM ET

A tweaked version of Firefox that makes Web browsing anonymous has been released by a group of privacy-minded coders.

Every few minutes, the Torpark browser causes a computer's IP address to appear to change. IP addresses are numeric identifier given to computers on the Internet. The number can be used along with other data to potentially track down a user, as many Web sites keep track of IP addresses.

Hackers Promote Privacy

Torpark's creators, a group of computer security gurus and privacy experts named Hactivismo, said they want to expand privacy rights on the Internet as new technologies increasingly collect online data.

The browser is free to download at torpark.nfshost.com. It's a modified version of Portable Firefox, an optimized version of the browser that can be run off a USB memory stick on a computer.

The Torpark browser uses encryption to send data over The Onion Router, a worldwide network of servers nicknamed "Tor" set up to transfer data to one another in a random, obscure fashion.

Tweaked Firefox Lets You Surf Internet Without a Trace

Posted by: Ace at 05:14 PM | Comments (55)
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Apparently, the good old fashioned pimp slap wasn't covered in the impending deal on "detainee interrogation methods" that is about to be announced.

Courtesy of The Corner at National Review Online, the President has had the following to say about the bill that has been reworked and will be presented to the Senate:

I had a single test for the pending legislation, and that's this: Would the CIA operators tell me whether they could go forward with the program, that is a program to question detainees to be able to get information to protect the American people. I'm pleased to say that this agreement preserves the most single — most potent tool we have in protecting America and foiling terrorist attacks, and that is the CIA program to question the world's most dangerous terrorists and to get their secrets.

The measure also creates military commissions that will bring these ruthless killers to justice. In short, the agreement clears the way to do what the American people expect us to do, to capture terrorists, to detain terrorists, to question terrorists, and then to try them. I hope the Congress will send me legislation before it wraps up their business next week.

The devil is in the details, of course, but it appears the President is convinced that the compromise will allow the intelligence community to use the tools necessary to protect American lives. Even if these tools may include some (but not all) of the practices that McCain, Lindsey "Wagner" Graham and Andrew Sullivan find to be "gob-smackingly vile".

Hopefully, the final bill will measure up to the billing (no pun intended) that the President is giving it. If so, it will be a welcome piece of legislation.

I'll post an update when I can find an official summary of the agreement, or a more detailed news account of what the bill includes.

Fingers crossed.

UPDATE BY ACE: Jim Angle on FoxNews just claimed that the deal concerns the War Crimes Act-- that rape, murder, maiming and other "grave breaches" of the Geneva Conventions would be prosecutable, "anything else short of torture would be considered acceptable."

Still doesn't define the what torture is.

Also, no classified information will be shared with terrorists, no sources & methods, etc.

The agreement is now forged between Bush and the rebel Republicans. Whether or not the Democrats will agree is another question.

It would be better, politically, if they mostly didn't, but enough came on board to push it through.

I'm not sure this defines anything. But it doesn't outlaw anything, either.

Is the status quo progress? Not sure.

UPDATE #2: BY JACK M.

Fox News (of course) has a good account of the agreement here.

With regard to coercive techniques, the bill apparently does this:

One official said that under the agreement, the administration agreed to drop language that would have stated an existing ban on cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment was enough to meet Geneva Convention obligations. Convention standards are much broader and include a prohibition on "outrages" against "personal dignity."

In turn, this official said, negotiators agreed to clarify what acts constitute a war crime. The official spoke on condition of anonymity, saying he had not been authorized to discuss the details.

which I think is a win for the administration and for the intelligence community. Let's have a public debate over what constitutes a war crime and what the standards should be. And let's have Congress on record as giving legal guidance to those who may be called upon to take these actions.

I'm fairly confident that the end result of having to "define" these practices will result in the American public having a much different standard of "torture" than St. John of Free Media Love, Lindsey "Wagner" Graham, and St. Andrew of the Blessed Heart Ache. And I have a feeling that the final definitions agreed to legislatively will be more reflective of the American public's mood than of the mood of the self-annointed trinity.

I really wanted to excerpt a John McCain of Lindsey "Wagner" Graham quote, but there really isn't anything striking about their remarks. Graham insists he was only really ever concerned about the use of classified information. McCain made some general remarks about how this bill ensures a President has the tools he needs.

Which is revealing, in and of itself. Their quotes don't exactly sound triumphalist.

Which, in DC speak, means they lost.

Posted by: Ace at 01:44 PM | Comments (56)
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I think the theme is obvious. more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:32 PM | Comments (57)
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Good to see, though, that maybe they've shaken a couple less unhinged partisan liberals out of their stupor.

Check out the headlines running on FoxNews screencapped at HotAir.

Okay: Whereas I appreciate the sentiment... dude, seriously? Get your shit under control.

The National Black Republican Association... needs to get it's shit under control, too.

The ad's okay, if a bit strident, until the end. And then the "Giiiiirrrlll.. we got to walk the walk" stuff comes in.

And then the fake laughs. They just spent one minute speaking (very quickly) about the Klan, burning crosses, Jim Crow, etc. After all that, they have themselves a nice chuckle.

Kind of embarrassing, even if it was put out by a black association.

We're determined to keep our nickname of the Stupid Party, no matter how much the Democratic Party fights us for the rights.

Posted by: Ace at 12:12 PM | Comments (37)
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We've always wondered what exactly the US said to Musharraf to make him reverse Pakistan's wholesale support of the Taliban after 9/11.

We weren't just promising aid. We weren't offering to sell a few F-16's.

We told them that either they sided with us against their lunatic client state or they would be bombed into the "stone age."

I have a whole new respect for Bush.

I want this story out there, far and wide.

I want every liberal politician to be asked on the record: "Do you support this? Would you have had the balls to make a similar threat after 9/11?"

Thanks for setting the record straight, Pervez. We've all been wondering.

This will be helpful.

Bombing never solved anything?

It seems to have solved the problem of how to get to landlocked Afghanistan, huh?

Thanks to Larwyn.

Posted by: Ace at 11:29 AM | Comments (54)
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Check it out:

Williams: Mr. President, this is not a matter of great concern, this next question, but we have gotten used to seeing you in the tan jacket with the zipper. Today, you are dressed differently. Is that jacket a symbol of your standing or upbringing in Iran?

Ahmadinejad: No. It depends on which one I'm more comfortable wearing. And it of course depends on my colleagues and friends, too. I knew that you were going to wear a suit, so I decided to wear this jacket.

Williams fails to ask Ahmadinejad any follow ups to his declarations that he only wants peace. Apparently Williams hasn't heard Ahmadinejad's many statements about creating a new world without Israel and America, about the world being controlled by Muslims in a few years, etc.

If anyone says to me that Katie Couric is losing because she does "fluffy" news, I'll laugh in their faces. Brian Williams is pursuing the fluffy demographic as hard as Oprah.

Posted by: Ace at 11:08 AM | Comments (18)
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The more time you spend around them, the more you want them to lose.

The night of [Obama's speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention] I'm in a bar by myself in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and what do I hear all around me by the white hipsters as we watch the Democratic Convention together? "Wow, he's so articulate." "This guy should be president, look how well he speaks." "Wow, I'd vote for him." And it really hit me all at once...these guys are really patronizing. They deliberately go out of their way to vocally champion him in earshot of everyone else not so much for what it says about Obama but rather for what it says about them. I'm tolerant. I'm not racist. I'm a member of the "new" America, the kind that's multicultural, metropolitan and eats at French bistros all day (we were actually next door to a French bistro). I want to be sure everyone hears me vocalize my support for a black president. It all seemed so transparent and self-serving. Even worse is when I could feel people sneaking peeks at me, as if guaging my reaction to their progressiveness. I didn't respond.

But that word "articulate" kept flying around the bar. Over and over. And it really bugged me, because it was so damn patronizing. How often do you hear people marvel at a white guy just for being articulate? It's considered par for the course; it's what you expect for a white guy. That's why Bush gets so much flack for being inarticulate, because mere articulation is considered such a basic skill for a white politician that Bush's lack of it is found to be appalling. When these white liberals go on and on about how incredible it is for Obama to speak well, it speaks volumes about their expectations of black people. They hold black people to lowered standards, then praise them for accomplishing things that are considered the norm for white people. What they're really saying is "he's articulate...which for a black guy is incredible."

Bonus: John McWhorter on the one real reason everyone's big on Barack Obama, but won't admit. (Hint: It's related to the fact that he's articulate.)

No one likes to be objectified, even if that objectification is supposedly "well-meaning." I have to imagine it's pretty grating for blacks to constantly be cast in the role of Damsel in Distress for Great White Heroes to untie from the railroad tracks. Well-meaning, sure, but still essentially props in the narrative of White Liberal Heroism.

Or, in the style of the vacationing, screenplay-writing Jeff Goldstein, blacks are merely signifiers, reified ideations, in a narrative of white liberal superiority.

Or something.

Many of our choices are signifiers of who we are (or, at least, who we perceive ourselves to be, or how we would like to be perceived). But when human beings are used essentially as tribal-signifying fashion accessories, you're getting into a kind of dicey area.

Typo Patrol... Corrected this one, corrected some of my more egregious typos on earlier posts. What the hell is wrong with me today?

Posted by: Ace at 10:45 AM | Comments (52)
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Based on Frank Miller's graphic novel about the 300 Spartans who held off an entire Persian army at... I wanna say Thermypolae, but I know that's wrong.

I'm pretty sure it was somewhere in Greece.

Anyway, they're following the Sin City model of a literal adaptation of Miller's over-the-top archly expressionistic style. I guess that's a good idea; I liked Troy a lot, but as I've just seen that, it's good that this one will be in a very different style.

Posted by: Ace at 10:35 AM | Comments (70)
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Matthew "Boycrush" Yglesias:

I keep talking about this with people in real life, but it deserves a blog mention as well -- Mahmoun Ahmadinejad has a pretty sweet hipster style. It all starts with a beard not unlike the one I and many of my twentysomething male friends sport. But it goes deeper. The man went without a tie to address the UN General Assembly. And I was in a bar where the TV was showing his interview with Anderson Cooper (it's DC, these things happen) and while there was no sound, he certainly looked witty and charming. There was also this clip of him walking down some hallway shooting the shit with Kofi Annan. It's like diplomacy! Bush should try it. One gets the sense that he's getting his stody red tie-wearing ass kicked this session by sundry third world goons and it's really not a proud moment for the United States.

Note to Bush: Grow a beard; wear a ratty old Ocean Pacific longsleeve and Tevas; address the UN while sucking beer out of the tubes of a beer-hat.

Thanks to Allah.

Sullivan is, of course, equally smitten, though he's more careful about larding up his post with attacks on Ahmadinejad in his usual hyperbolically emotional style.

Sullivan also none-too-subtly compares Ahmadinejad's fundamentalism-engendered serenity too Bush's:

The serenity may also come from his own fundamentalist psyche. There's a reason fundamentalism is popular. Unlike other forms of faith, it relieves the believer of almost all responsibility for any of his doubts, it surrenders everything in a person's psyche to God's will, it appeases all anxiety and reassures away every question. And so, in many cases, it can be a source of great goodness, unleashing compassion and service and amazing resilience. Look at how fundamentalism created, say, the Salvation Army. But in others, it can become the constant absolution and rationalization of almost any action. It can justify torture. It can legitimize all sorts of ugly means because the motive is deemed pure. In a religion like Islam, where reason has been eclipsed for a very long time, the absence of oxygen for the doubt that makes faith both real and reasonable is acute. The combination of that psyche with naked political cunning is one of the most dangerous combinations there is. We are looking at a man who absolutely believes he is right...

It is an article of faith among lefties, such as Sullivan, that they are more "open-minded" than the religious crazies they so despise. The religious crazies are driven by an unquestioned assumption that they are right; the lefties, on the other hand, are open to reason and self-doubt and self-examination.

They are?

Has Sullivan ever expressed any doubt on his religious conviction that gays should be allowed to be married? No, he has not. In fact, he's actually justified his position on religious moral grounds.

Has Sullivan ever allowed for the possibility that coercive interrogations may be a necessary semi-evil in the War on Terror? No, he has not. In fact, he's frequently justifies his position on religious moral grounds.

His current jihad has every third post damning religious Christians for failing to live up to Jesus' well-known injunction that Muslim terrorists should not be coercively interrogated to save innocent lives. One recent post parodies "What Would Jesus Do?" to "Who Would Jesus Torture?"

Has Sullivan even deigned to mention Brian Ross' bombshell that even CIA agents opposed to coercive interrogations admit it is 100% effective and has saved lives? Of course not. Sullivan's argument is based on quasi-religious dogma that "coercion never works" and he will not allow this article of faith to be impugned by something as petty as "the facts." Further, he'll deny his readership any direct link to the story, in order to insulate them against the blasphemy of doubt it might cause.

Hedrik Hertzberg trotted out this claim years ago in The New Yorker, displaying not a single self-doubt or reservation in 2000 some words that he and his allies on the left were anything but 100% right on every single issue in American politics.

If the left wants to claim these vast resources of self-reflection and self-examination, they really ought to be required to demonstrate some of it once in a while.

Unrelated Item Bonus Update: Mr. Green Helmet makes it to the UN's General Assembly.

Lebaonon's President displayed this photo for the delegates:

...which is a photo of Mr. Green Helmet parading a corpse, as usual.

This was the next photo he showed:

Pic courtesy of Slublog.

Correction: In a rush, I wrote that Mr. Green Helmet was at the podium. He wasn't. The picture displayed is of Mr. Green Helmet.

Posted by: Ace at 09:56 AM | Comments (53)
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Eh, who cares about that. What if 35,000 people showed up for a pro-Israel, anti-Iran rally and not a single media organization carried the story?

Bear in mind, this would be the same MSM that will give an anti-war rally numbering in the tens prominent placement on their website.

CNN did that couple years back-- 60 people showed up for an anti-war rally. It was the top story in a list of stories on the CNN website. (To clarify: It wasn't the big headline story, but it was at the top of the list of headlines to the side of the headline story.)

So-- an anti-war rally of 60 people gets top placement on CNN; a pro-Israel rally of 35,000 gets not even a single story.

They way they... surround a story with silence, part 4,305.

Posted by: Ace at 09:41 AM | Comments (11)
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